A district court judge in Texas has dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by [name redacted] on his own behalf and on behalf of his 15-year-old son, [name redacted]. They had sued Fox News, Glenn Beck, and the mayor of Irving — among others — for defamation in September of 2016.

A year earlier, [name redacted], then a 14-year-old freshman at an Irving, Texas, high school, was arrested, briefly detained by police, and suspended for three days after bringing to school a “cool clock” that looked like a briefcase bomb. [name redated] claimed to have “invented” the easily assembled clock, and that he had brought it to school to show it to his shop teacher.

The incident led many to question the [name redacted] family’s motives. Newly appointed District Court Judge Maricela Moore dismissed the lawsuit following a nearly three-hour hearing on Monday, according to the American Freedom Law Center:

The motion to dismiss was filed by lawyers from the American Freedom Law Center (“AFLC”) and local counsel Pete Rowe on behalf of the Center for Security Policy (“CSP”) and Jim Hanson, two of the defendants in the defamation case, which also named as defendants the local Fox affiliate, Glenn Beck, and Beck’s production company.

Mohamed had sued Hanson and CSP for statements Hanson had made on Beck’s program about the connection between the Clock Boy hoax bomb affair, the attendant media frenzy created in large part by his father Mohamed, civilization jihad, and the Counsel on American-Islamic Relations (“CAIR”), the Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group in the United States that promotes civilization jihad.

During the hearing, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel David Yerushalmi explained to Judge Moore that the purpose of the lawfare-driven lawsuit was to intimidate into silence those who might comment publicly on the connection between jihad, terrorism, sharia, and Islam. As such, Yerushalmi argued, “this case is a classic Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation or ‘SLAPP’ case and should be dismissed.”

During the lengthy hearing, Judge Moore pressed Mohamed’s lawyer, Fort Worth attorney Susan Hutchison, to provide any facts that would suggest that Hanson and the other defendants had said anything false or defamatory about Mohamed or his son during the television broadcasts. After spending a painfully embarrassing 15 minutes flipping through reams of paper, Mohamed’s lawyer was unable to provide any such evidence.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Moore said that she would rule by the end of the day. On Tuesday, the court published Judge Moore’s ruling dismissing the lawsuit against Hanson and CSP with prejudice.

Every individual and organization named in the suit should now counter sue for defamation.

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How very surprising! Wait, surprising is not the word I was searching for, what is it again…. Oh, yes, the word is “predictable”. Another phony “hate crime” proving that we are all “racists” and “Islamophobes”. At least they bothered to actually fake it this time, rather than run to Facebook and merely say it happened with no evidence.

pennywit

Couple notes: Case arose in Texas state court. Judge is elected, not appointed. Has anybody seen a link to the decision? I’d be interested in reading it.

During the lengthy hearing, Judge Moore pressed Mohamed’s lawyer, Fort Worth attorney Susan Hutchison, to provide any facts that would suggest that Hanson and the other defendants had said anything false or defamatory about Mohamed or his son during the television broadcasts. *After spending a painfully embarrassing 15 minutes flipping through reams of paper, Mohamed’s lawyer was unable to provide any such evidence*.

pennywit

Whenever I read coverage of a First Amendment or SLAPP case, I like to read the judge’s opinion for myself.

pennywit

Didn’t find the opinion, but Ken White’s commentary summarizes the legal issues well. Your quote is long on theatrics, short on legal analysis.

Accountability to the people was both a motivator and a by product, but it wasn’t the primary mover. The election of everything from dog catcher to governor came after more federal troops were refused after the reconstruction governor lost the election in 1873. The various appointments of officials during reconstruction without support of the people was a major sore point, so the Texas constitution provided for direct election of most positions.

Absolutely necessary to dismiss this rubbish lawsuit while discouraging others trying to follow suit in filing similar suits. Maybe the outgoing president can console this genius and young muslim student!

Brett Buck

I doubt that they need Obama’s direct support to fake racial incidents, there seem to be plenty of people willing to do it unbidden.

While I am well aware that genuine racism still exists and it just as objectionable as it ever was, you have to wonder if the fake racist incidents outnumber the real ones? All the fake incidents certainly undermine the cause of eliminating the real problem.

I guess that’s the story of race relations for the past 40-ish years – as racism goes down, the cries of persecution and phony outrage go up, in order to keep the scams going.

IHC

Quite a trade-off and none of them are good. Great comment!

Rick Adams

As someone who has MADE homemade clocks, I was totally in this guy’s corner at first. “Oh, cool! What’d he use to build it? Arduino and a LCD display? Raspberry Pi and an LED array? Maybe started with a specialty LSI alarm clock chip? I wanna see!” Then I saw the photo. “Wha? That’s odd. He has access to a wave soldering machine? Waaaaaitaminute…”